Posts in Category: patient experience of care

Christiana Care Health System, one of the largest healthcare providers in the mid-Atlantic, has achieved wide-ranging improvements in both clinical performance and business outcomes after implementing strategies designed to ensure top-quality care delivery while at the same time containing costs.

Christiana's success began with a data strategy that will be laid out in a complimentary webinar called Delivering Clinical and Business Excellence: The Power Of Data Transparency. Subtitled How Christiana Care Leverages Cardiology Data to Improve Care Quality and Contain Costs, the webinar will take place on Thursday, Feb. 2.

It will include discussions on:

How data transparency drives cost and outcome awareness and impacts the CV service line

Christiana Care's experience comparing the costs and benefits of undertaking a costing model

The value of case attributes

Presented by Leslie Mulshenock, Director of Heart & Vascular Services, and Matthew Esham, Heart & Vascular Service Line Manager, the webinar will also include a summary of the costs and benefit of Christiana's strategic improvement plan, which has resulted in optimal reimbursement, lower costs-per-case and higher patient satisfaction.

A live Q & A will conclude the Feb. 2 event, which will take place at 1 p.m. Eastern time, 12 p.m. Central and 10 a.m. Pacific.

Patient safety is once again in the news with the recent release of the Leapfrog Group's Fall 2016 Hospital Safety Grade List. Almost all the hospitals on the list received a passing grade. Of the 2,633 hospitals evaluated, 844 earned an "A," 658 earned a "B," 954 earned a "C," 157 earned a "D" and 20 earned an "F."

Leapfrog's biannual program assigns A, B, C, D and F letter grades to the hospitals surveyed. When compared to previous lists, several states showed significant improvement this time. North Carolina, for example, climbed to No. 5 in this fall's list, up from No. 19 in spring 2013.

Hawaii ranked No. 1 for the first time, while Alaska, Delaware, and North Dakota, along with Washington, D.C., brought up the rear. None of the bottom-ranked states had a hospital that earned an A grade.

Improving patient safety is, of course, a major priority for healthcare providers. Research published in The Journal of Health Care Finance found that medical errors cost the United States $19.5 billion in 2008 alone. A 2016 study estimated that these mistakes cause 251,000 deaths a year in the U.S., where they are the third-leading cause of death (after heart disease and cancer).

For more information on the Leapfrog list, including a full description of the data and methodology used, click here.

Last weekend was a busy one for those trying to parse the new MACRA rule released on Friday. At 2,202 pages, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act rule wasn't exactly beach reading, and it gave the health IT community plenty to talk about on social media and in policy statements.

The dust is still settling, but it appears that early reaction to the rule was mostly positive. Healthcare organizations praised the CMS for being responsive to concerns they had raised during the comment period leading up to the rule's finalization. In fact, about 80 percent of the 2,000+ pages are comments CMS received and its responses.
The American Medical Association was pleased with the permanent elimination of the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula. "The new law," according to the AMA's press release, "gives many physicians the opportunity to be rewarded for the improvements they make to their practices and for delivering high-quality, high-value care to Medicare patients."
Other features that drew favorable reactions included:

The rule's overarching theme that improving the organization and payment models for medical care must stress quality over quantity.

Greater reporting flexibility for clinicians, as well as support for innovation in the delivery of care.

The formal adoption of a transition year during 2017, which makes major changes to the Quality Payment Program (QPP) reporting requirements, and provides a longer time frame for those transitioning to the QPP.

Emphasis on helping clinicians educate themselves about the rule.

Easing of the policy defining the Advanced Alternative Payment Model (APM), which will allow additional programs to quality.

But the rule is not without its detractors. "It's disappointing that the flexibility provided for quality reporting in 2017 largely disappears in 2018 and beyond," the Medical Group Management Association said in a policy statement.
Other organizations complained that the nominal risk standard defining the Advanced APM remains too high.

Want to know more? Healthcare Dive has a great breakdown of the rule changes you need to know. And for even more information on the new rule, click here.What's your take on the final MACRA rule? Share your thoughts in our comment section below.

The Role of Mobile & The Cloud

Q: What is the role of mobile and the cloud in the healthcare analytics industry?

A: Cloud-based technologies hold the promise of delivering better technology solutions at reduced cost. Mobile will increasingly be the platform of choice for quick updates of the most relevant information for a specific situation. Mobile platforms provide an efficient and effective way to consume healthcare analytics.

Q: What challenges and benefits do you predict will arise as mobile and cloud-based access becomes more prevalent?

A: Security protocols will have to meet standards and may limit access to specific patient data. Analytics not at the patient level will become easy to access. Increasingly, caregivers will know how their organizations are doing at meeting care quality goals efficiently. Eventually, patients may get there too.

Q: What use will healthcare organizations have for patient-generated data?

A: Over time, biometric data collection devices will become connected, cheap enough, and prevalent enough that we will all know our health metrics much better than we do today. As standards arise, healthcare organizations will have to engage with patients to better understand what stories biometrics have to tell, and patients will want to share with their providers to gain better insights into their own health. If providers are not able to deliver insights from biometric data, someone else will.

The scores patients assign their hospitals appear to correspond with the quality of the hospitals' patient outcomes, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine. Researchers analyzed the scores patients assigned to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' star-rating system for more than 3,000 hospitals. Hospitals' star ratings were inversely proportional to their rates of death within a month of discharge.

While the average primary care physician is generating less income for hospitals ($1.4 million in 2016 versus $1.56 million in 2013), that’s offset by specialist doctors, whose contribution to hospital revenues jumped 14% to $1.6 million, compared with $1.42 million three years ago. Among specialists, orthopedic physicians bring in the most business ($2.75 million each), followed by invasive cardiologists ($2.45 million) and neurosurgeons ($2.44 million.

Healthcare organizations named to Fortune's 20 Best Workplaces in Health Care share a sense of camaraderie and pride in their work, and offer lessons to other hospitals and systems that strive to create a positive work environment that can attract and retain the best talent. The winning organizations overcame the natural hierarchy of a healthcare organization to create a friendly, emotionally supportive workplace where coworkers feel as though everyone is equal and they can count on coworkers to support them.

Building on its rich history as the premier heart hospital in Wisconsin and a global destination for heart care, Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center has received two prestigious accolades from the Accreditation for Cardiovascular Excellence (ACE). Both acknowledgments from ACE reinforce Aurora St. Luke’s positioning as a global leader in cardiovascular excellence.

As digitization of the healthcare system increases, issues around data exchange and medical records exchange make patient identification more challenging than ever. In the absence of a unique patient identifier system, doctors use a patient’s name and birth dates to identify them, and there can be hundreds or thousands of identical or similar names and dates in EMR systems. Get it wrong, and a diagnosis or treatment may be missed — sometimes with dire consequences.

Rates of total high cholesterol and low high-density protein (HDL) in U.S. adults decreased between 2011 and 2014, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). From 2009 to 2010, 13.4 percent of adults had high cholesterol and 21.3 percent had low HDL cholesterol. From 2011 to 2014, those percentages dropped to 12.1 percent and 18.5 percent, respectively.

Fewer than half of patients considered candidates for cholesterol-lowering treatments are actually implementing the treatments, which include exercising more, taking statin medication and losing weight. “Cholesterol treatment gaps” are greater among non-white ethnic groups in the United States than they are for Americans who are white.

Adverse effects after angioplasty and interventional radiology procedures are more common in patients who are fearful or distressed prior to the procedures. Patients who went in with negative emotions were more likely than those with positive or neutral emotions to experience prolonged lack of oxygen, low or high blood pressure, post-operative bleeding or an abnormally slow heart rate.

Are critical care and emergency room (ER) staff ready to handle the next terrorist or other mass casualty event? Two-thirds of the physicians and nurses surveyed recently said no. They’re concerned about shortages of available surgeons, beds and blood supplies.

Outcomes-based patient care requires a paradigm shift that has yet to occur for many in healthcare management, according to a Harvard Business Review blog post. Successfully adapting to this new business model requires investing time and money over the long haul, plus taking two other key actions, the post says.

Read the latest case study from Diagnostic & Interventional Cardiology to learn how Orlando Health has successfully implemented LUMEDX's physician structured reporting and image management solution across five of its campuses. Read how the hospitals use standardized reports for echo in order to improve efficiency and streamline workflow.

According to Medscape, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) recently announced a 5-year, randomized controlled trial to test the idea of paying physicians for reducing the long-term cardiovascular risk of their high-risk patients. CMMI will enroll 720 practices in the clinical trial between June and September, and the trial is scheduled to begin in January 2016.

Hospitals & Health Networks Daily reports on how patients are now rating their physicians' communication skills on the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services' HCAHPS Survey. The survey shows that higher performance leads to better clinical outcomes, and the ratings will be linked to hospital reimbursements.

Healthcare IT News reports that Rishi Sikka, MD, Senior Vice President of Clinical Transformation for Advocate Health Care, has offered some advice for healthcare organizations looking to implement population health. He states that the first step is to establish the "why" -- your organization's specific goals for population health.

The Coalition for ICD-10 has touted the importance of ICD-10 in moving the healthcare industry towards value-based care, because ICD-9 codes do not have the same capabilities as the newer set. However, many physician groups are still opposed to the ICD-10 implementation and are pushing for additional delays.

According to HIT Consultant, the global telemedicine market reached $17B in 2014 and stands to reach $21B by 2020. This market includes telemedicine hardware, software and services -- and the growth is being driven by chronic disease treatment, the rise of mobile health, and evidence-based care initiatives.

Affects 5.8 million people in the U.S., with over 600,000 more diagnosed each year;

Is one of the fastest growing heart disease conditions, with an expected increase of 25% by 2030;

And cost the U.S. $39.2 billion in 2010 through health care services, medications, and productivity losses.

We at LUMEDX understand that in addition to educating patients on heart failure facts, symptoms, and preventative measures, it is also vital to examine the care provider’s side – namely, how to tackle the many challenges associated with managing a successful heart failure program.

Heart hospitals strive to provide timely, highest quality treatment to patients across the entire continuum of care – while finding ways to reduce costs, protect reimbursements, and manage populations efficiently. With a successful heart failure program in place, hospitals can improve patient outcomes by reducing readmissions and mortality rates while also saving time and money.

It is critical for clinicians, hospital administrators, vendors, and other stakeholders to come together and share ideas on how to optimize management and treatment of heart failure patient populations – both now and moving forward.

To add to this conversation, LUMEDX invites you to join us for a complimentary webinar next week on Heart Failure outcomes analytics: Using Analytics to Identify and Manage Heart Failure Patients. The webinar will take place next Thursday, February 20 at 1pm Eastern Time. You can register by clicking here.

We will continue to post on topics related to heart failure awareness for the rest of this week, and look forward to reading your thoughts in the comments. Follow us on Twitter and Google+ for more.

According to Healthcare IT News, the HIMMS Innovation Center opened its doors this week in Cleveland. The goal of the new center is to engage people and give them opportunities to learn about healthcare IT. The facility includes a Health IT Simulation Center and a Healthcare Technology Showcase.

During the government shutdown, meaningful use programs will continue to be in place, as healthcare IT incentives do not come from annual appropriations. Federal incentives for electronic health records will continue to roll out.

iHealthBeat covers a recent study conducted by the ONC that shows that electronic prescribing has grown significantly over the past few years. As of December 2012, 94% of urban pharmacies were accepting e-prescriptions, and 93% or rural pharmacies were accepting them.